20th November 2024: Here are some of the stories that caught our attention over the week with some of our takeaways.
Ixigo’s “Love Train” To Success: Cracking The Code in the Indian Travel Market: WebinTravel captures the story of Ixigo very eloquently and I’d highly recommend watching the on stage conversation between the Ixigo CEO and Pete Comeau of Phocuswright included in the article. No hype, just the facts, a story beautifully narrated on long term success through a history of putting bookers first and innovating with tech! Here is the link to the video.
And some key takeaways:
“If you want to win in India, you have to win trains first” – this became Ixigo’s guiding principle as they built their travel product. Starting as a simple meta-search platform, they made a bold pivot that many competitors missed – focusing intensely on India’s railway system. Their train app’s success spoke volumes, hitting 10 million downloads in just two years.
While others were busy watching competitors especially the western model of flights first and then hotels, Ixigo was studying how Indians actually travel. Aloke Bajpai, their CEO, emphasises that understanding consumer behaviour was worth more than any competitor analysis.
The numbers also are pretty powerful: India’s OTA market is growing at 18%, well above GDP growth. And 60% of first-time flight bookers are actually train or bus travellers upgrading their travel style. Ixigo saw this pattern early and played the long game, transforming from a meta-search engine into a full-service OTA – although it is still early stages for hotels.
The next four years look bright for travel technology: The leader of the US Travel Technology Association writes in Phocuswire about being optimistic about the new Trump administration and its influence on Travel Tech. Promoting US leadership in AI technology, increasing competition and addressing dominant tech platforms and removal of barriers to innovation by supporting smaller tech companies through favourable tax policies and a more streamlined M&A landscape are called out as reasons.
The couple who took on Google and cost the tech giant £2bn: The BBC reports on the backstory of how Google ended up with a record €2.4 billion fine. This fascinating but gruelling story of the underdog is captured in the article that recounts the lengthy legal battle between Shivaun and Adam Raff, founders of the price comparison website Foundem, and Google. Their website, which initially thrived, suffered a significant drop in search rankings after being flagged as spam by Google’s algorithms. This led to a 15-year legal fight, culminating in a record €2.4 billion fine against Google for abusing its market dominance by promoting its own comparison shopping service while demoting competitors like Foundem. Despite this eventual victory, they had to close Foundem in 2016. – it is indeed a cautionary tale about the power of Big Tech and the difficulty of challenging their practices.
The fall of peak – analyzing how frequent sales are driving a greater need for continuous optimization: Quantum Metric provides some intriguing stats around peak sales days and provides evidence that they are seeing discount days more prevalent than ever before and as a result travellers are less persuaded than before to focus mainly on those events/days. (For those who don’t know Quantum Tech, they are a Colorado-based tech company that helps big businesses understand how customers actually use their websites and apps – and now analyses over 4 billion user sessions monthly and works with 20% of Fortune 500 companies)
Indian Hotels Company Limited Unveils Growth Plan for 2030, Targets 700+ Hotels: The owners of the Taj Group of hotels announced its strategy for the next decade – one that outlines ambitious growth plans, including doubling the company’s portfolio to over 700 hotels and boosting its consolidated revenue to INR 15,000 crores (about $1.8 B). They have plans for international expansion, particularly in global gateway cities, focusing on capital-light routes with the Taj brand.
